I M A G I N Eby
stevieianComment by Artifacts: Positives:
Pose, capture and lighting angle are the strengths of this composition.
Technicals:
Color is fine. Lighting angle is good but the right side of the face is a little overexposed and flat looking. Use of noise reduction is good for producing a soft look but may be overdone.
Its a small thing but the wrinkles in your model's shirt is a slight distraction.
The Challenge:
Meets the challenge for a color portrait and scored almost right at the average for the challenge. Voters felt this was an average portrait. Probably the two things that held it down in scoring is the overexposure of the face and the slight overuse of noise reduction.
Suggestions:
The most noticeable oversmoothing is on the leather couch or chair he is sitting in. One thing you might try is to apply noise reduction on a separate duplicate data layer then add a mask to that duplicate layer and paint out the the oversmoothing in the chair. That way you retain the smoothing of the face without getting unnatural smoothing in the chair. It is the best of both worlds. :)
You can try this and I don't guarantee it will work but you can add a 50% greyscale layer and then burn in the right side of his face to bring back more detail if it is there. There are other things you can do with the original that would also retain detail in her face assuming it was in the original and just lost in post processing.
Remember to get clothes properly placed when doing portraits. That is worth checking once, twice and three times after each pose change. :)
Message edited by author 2007-05-30 13:24:34. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
